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Twitch.tv
Twitch.tv is a platform used mainly for live streaming video games, but can also be used for viewing eSports competitions, music broadcasts, creative content, and 'in real life' streams. Videos can be watched either live or by searching for past videos on a content creator's page.1 History Twitch.tv was created in 2011 as a spin-off of a different site called Justin.tv, but quickly grew to outshine its predecessor. Then in 2014, Twitch.tv was bought by Amazon for $970 million dollars. As a part of Amazon, Twitch.tv has gained even more fame and is now the "leading live streaming video service for video games" in the U.S.1 How to Use Platform Affordances & Constraints The affordances and constraints of the interface is dependent on which demographic you fall into as a user. Depending on the user identity, affordances and constraints are explored below in accordance with how the interface encourages certain activities while limiting others. One common constraint across the spectrum is how the browse feature treats different channels. Channels are separated by active logged-in viewers, meaning games like League of Legends, Fortnite, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Counter Strike, and Dota II are pushed to the top of the browse page making it more likely for viewers to check out those sections instead of others. Beyond that, within each section each channel is placed in a list depending on the number of viewers they have. This means that viewers that want a slower chat, twitch moderators trying to moderate some of the questionable behavior that happens in small channels, and content creators just starting out will have a hard time finding a place on the platform. Content Creators Content creators on Twitch take a similar role to the normalized content creator on platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, and Snapchat, the only difference being that the content creators on Twitch are live throughout their produced content. The live component becomes a staple of the interactions between the creators and their viewers, as such each individual content creator's channel has a unique culture than the other channels on the platform. Very few affordances are given to the content creators on Twitch, there is an understanding that they are meant to broadcast their sessions but beyond that there is little access to information on how to get started on Twitch's website. Thankfully, third parties have gone out of their way to make informative guides for people interested in starting. Constraints are numerous for content creators. Particularly that they are often supposed to be mindful of everything they do as inappropriate actions can't be edited out afterwards and many things are associated with a zero tolerance policy that will result in a ban or suspension. Other constraints include: needing third party programs to broadcast their gameplay or webcam, needing to set up your own donation page, needing to create your own emotes once partnered, needing to keep track of your unique stream ID that can't be retrieved by Twitch if forgotten, and needing to be responsible of everything that happens in your channel. Moderators Channel Moderators Channel moderators control the flow of a channel's chat. They generally interact like a normal viewer except for their ability to delete messages from the chat and ban users from the chat entirely. With recent changes to community guidelines, moderators have an extra responsibility to filter out damaging speech that violates the rules (more on this below). Twitch Moderators Twitch moderators, or "Twitch Staff," are individuals who work to verify claims of abuse of the company's platform. They respond to user reports of both content creators and general users for a litany of reasons. Twitch moderators have the unique abilities to suspend or ban content creators that violate the community guidelines, IP ban individuals who evade bans or suspensions, and to hide themselves when investigating reports of abuse. Moderators have a relatively easy job to content creators as their affordances far outweigh their constraints. Moderators are marked by a sword (channel moderator) or a wrench (twitch staff), which allows viewers to know who has power over them. Moderators have a unique view of the chat feature of Twitch in which every user has a red 'X' next to their name which brings up a separate box that details how long to ban the user from the chat for. Twitch moderators have no constraints to their moderator status, but channel moderators have a couple. Channel moderators can have their status revoked by the content creator, may have difficulty in larger chat rooms with a lot more activity, and can have their power limited by the content creator that they moderate for. Viewers Viewers on Twitch can be grouped into two different categories, new users and current users. While the distinction is made between the two, an individual can be a user of the website without creating an account and thus having extreme restrictions on the service (no ability to chat, message others, follow channels, or subscribe). As such, these users will not be discussed in detail due to their only ability to use the interface is through the viewing option. New Users Twitch.tv runs like a combination of several other social media sites. Content is located in the middle of the screen, with subscriptions on the left-hand side and navigation buttons located at the top of the screen. When you create a new user Twitch acts somewhat like Twitter in the way that it will give you different games or topics that you might be interested in. It asks you to pick a few and when you've selected some it then gives you content creators who you can then subscribe to. It's a quick and easy way to get started on the website if you don't know what you're looking for. New users have their hand held through the account creation process making the platform seem very easy to use. However, this isn't the case once the process is completed. Subscribing through the Twitch Prime function is incorporate into the subscribe button at the top of the video player, but nowhere on the website do they tell you that linking your Amazon Prime to your Twitch account gives you access to the free subscription. If you don't have prior knowledge of Better TwitchTV you are alienated from the chatroom due to seemingly random words that are associated with emotes that are accessed through the extension. And most importantly, finding new people to watch can become a chore due to the limited "tag" feature that allow content creators to denote aspects of their channel. Current Users Current users often use third party programs or browser extensions to enhance their viewing experience. This includes adding extra emotes, allowing for more customization to the interface, and the ability to watch multiple streams at once. Current users also tend to be more likely to be "subscribed" to channels, subscribing involves a monthly payment for access to exclusive emotes and extra recognition from content creators. Some people also subscribe to support the person making content that they enjoy. Current users mostly have the interface under control and have much fewer constraints in comparison to the new users. Current users may not have access to the specific chat inputs of Better TwitchTV but they can hover their mouse over an emote to see what input is needed for it. They may have already linked their Amazon Prime account but they may not know about the monthly rewards or discounts on games that are associated with the feature. Chat Chatting is a staple of the social media platform side of Twitch. Oftentimes chatting is done between the content creator, users, and moderators. Chat rooms are used to ask questions about game play, make jokes about on-screen events, and to just generally talk to other users. Users can chat via alpha-numeric language or through a variety of emotes that are unlocked by creating an account, participating in event channels, subscribing to content creators, or downloading the Better TwitchTV browser extension for Firefox or Google Chrome. Community Guidelines Twitch Guidelines2 Twitch's community guidelines are representative of the environment that Twitch wants to cultivate on their platform. While the guidelines may be difficult to find for new or even experienced users, they are based mainly on a common sense policy. These policies are generated on a general consensus that users should not be discriminatory to other users or people outside of their platform based on protected group status, appearance, ability, medical condition, and gender identity; they should not willingly put others or themselves in danger through DDOS, SWATing, hacking, making threats to carry out violence against another user, and using a weapon on stream to threaten or inflict violence against others. Some of the guidelines aren't common sense however, and will be reviewed by Twitch staff in order to understand the context of the situation should any questionable behavior be reported. This includes: impersonation of another user or twitch staff, spamming, scamming, creation or distribution of malicious content, sexual content (nudity and pornography are strictly prohibited), extreme in-game violence, violation of intellectual property rights, and cheating in online games. Chat Guidelines In addition to Twitch's community guidelines, there are additional guidelines that are set in place by content creators and enforced by moderators in those chat rooms. From a collection of chat rules from top streamers, 10K viewers or more, common chat rules include: * English Only * Fresh Memes * Follow Twitch ToS * No Hate Speech * No Advertising * No "Backseat Gaming" (similar to backseat driving in which someone without control continuously makes suggestions) * No Politics * Respect Others * Be Human * Be Nice It should be noted that chat rules are not a commonplace for most channels with the exception of channels that are multilingual. Representation Gender While both men and women have equal opportunities at Twitch.tv to become a content creator, meaning they are both capable with the current mechanics of the website, their chances of becoming successful on the site are vastly different. There is an issue of sexism within the platform that creates a sort of hostile environment for female creators. Most women have a harder time being taken seriously as streamers, and are often oversexualized by the male audience. The opposite side of the coin being that women have found out that one way they can become more popular on the website is by showing a bit more skin, in turn using their sexuality to gain popularity. Which is then counterproductive to solving the problem of oversexualization of women on Twitch. Sex The biological sex of users on Twitch must also be taken into account as it can vary from their gender. Gender being how a person identifies, while biological sex being how our reproductive organs function. There is a problem of trans-phobia on Twitch that, while also happening around the world, is made clear by the minimal amount of transgender content creators on Twitch. The reason there aren't as many is because of the way most transgender streamers are treated on the website. The biological sex of a streamer is taken into account by the audience, usually in a negative way regarding transgender streamers. Race Race on Twitch has been a touchy subject for a long time. While there isn’t any distinction on who is allowed to stream based on race, there has been an issue among certain communities that involves using global emotes, emotes that are available to everyone, in racist ways, particularly in response to a black person appearing on screen. There are three distinct ways that Twitch, content creators, and viewers enable racism to occur on the platform: offloading responsibility to individual streamers, streamers using an emote or phrase one way and their community using it in another way, and usage of emotes in a ‘meme’ fashion (inputting an emote or phrase in response to others doing the same). In a recent update to the community guidelines released by Twitch there was introduced a clause that sought to hold content creators responsible for the behavior of their viewers. This was a rule that didn’t have a lot of impact for most streamers, though for some big names such as GreekGodX (commonly referred to as Greek), Forsen, Sodapoppin, XQCOW, and other streamers with “edgy” viewership this rule had a huge impact.3 The viewers of the aforementioned streamers often use global emotes such as triHard, in response to the presence of an African American on screen or to an African American stereotype, and cmonBruh, in response to behavior that might be viewed as racist and in some cases to words such as: ‘chicken,’ ‘black,’ variations on the n-word that aren’t filtered by Twitch’s algorithms, and anything else that can be seen as an African American stereotype. This usage of emotes that weren’t created for the purpose of racist behavior inadvertently created a divide on what groups are seen as welcomed on the platform.4 Another problem of this is the way that some of these streamers use these emotes for their own purposes that can be read as racist when context is disregarded. The most reported instance of this came from XQC’s usage of the emote combination “triHard 7” which has been co-opted to be seen as a saluting African American. XQC got in hot water with game publisher Blizzard and Twitch as a result of this usage on the official Overwatch League twitch channel when a black commentator was on screen, resulting in fines from the Overwatch League and a suspension on his professional player contract.5 Trihex, the face of triHard, has spoken about the emote quite a bit on his own channel. He refers to the emote as being on the most versatile emotes on the platform, calling it the go to cringe smile, the troll smile after you purposefully lose a game, the awkward smile when you don't know what to say, or even the genuinely, extremely happy smile. Trihex does understand the complex issue of the emote's usage and blames the stream of racist usage on immature trolls and doesn't want the emote to be removed because it would basically mean that the most toxic people on Twitch win.6 Sexuality The most common sexuality represented on Twitch.tv are heterosexuals. There is an option in the search bar to find LGBTQIA+ channels via a filter. The filter makes it easier to find channels that are specifically LGBTQIA+ friendly and accepting. The amount of streamers using this filter is very low though and most videos only get around 50 views at max. Twitch.tv has no set rules against LGBTQIA+ streamers or accounts but their community and general atmosphere tend to dissuade people who identify as LGBTQIA+. There is an abundance of heterosexual male and female streamers and audience members. References 1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitch.tv 2https://www.twitch.tv/p/legal/community-guidelines/ 3https://kotaku.com/twitchs-new-policies-are-worrying-some-provocative-stre-1822884644 4https://kotaku.com/racist-twitch-trolls-defeated-by-talking-banana-1826115980 5https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/12/17109790/overwatch-league-xqc-twitch-chat-toxicity 6https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsNDQIO1dRM